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SepsisNCT02747121

Effects of External Inspection on Sepsis Detection and Treatment

A study testing External inspection of health services in people with Sepsis, run by Norwegian Board of Health Supervision at 1 site in Norway.

Completed

Finished. The study has ended and is not enrolling. Results may be posted on the official record.

Official record
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Trial summary

External inspections are widely used as means to improve the quality of care. Despite their widespread use, there is limited knowledge about whether and how they affect the quality of care. Read more about this study

Who is it for?
Ages 18 years and older
Conditions the study is for
Sepsis
What is being tested?
External inspection of health services
Could I receive a placebo?
No, everyone receives an active treatment
How many people
7,407 participants
Where
1 siteNorway
Study dates
Apr 2016to Dec 2020
Phase
Interventional
Are there results?
Yes, posted in the registrySummary in the doctors' view

Key requirements

Who can take part, as listed by the sponsor. Only the study team can confirm whether you are eligible, so take this list to your doctor.

  • Ages 18 years and older
  • All sexes
  • No healthy volunteers
  • Adult, Older adult

Who may be able to join

  • Suspected infection and minimum 2 SIRS criteria. If high leucocytes are one of the two criteria, then 3 SIRS criteria are needed.

Who cannot join

  • Patients below the age of 18 years.
  • Patients who do not pass through the emergency room.

Trial locations and contacts

1 site in 1 country.

Norway1 site
  • Haukeland hospital

    Bergen, Hordaland, 5021

Other trials in Norway

About this study

External inspections are widely used as means to improve the quality of care. Despite their widespread use, there is limited knowledge about whether and how they affect the quality of care. This study uses inspection with detection and treatment of sepsis in hospitals as a case to evaluate the effect of inspections on the quality of care and to explore how inspections affect the hospitals.

Read the detailed description

The aim of this study is to assess what effect external inspections have on the quality of care provided to sepsis patients admitted to hospital and to explore how external inspections affect the involved organizations.

External inspections are widely used as a means to improve the quality of care, and it is a core element of regulatory regimes and certification and accreditation processes. The activity of assessing a health care organization's performance according to an externally defined standard has been described by partly overlapping terms such as external inspection, external review, supervision, and audit. The project uses the term external inspection implying that the inspection is initiated and controlled by an organization external to the one being inspected; and define it as: "a system, process or arrangement in which some dimensions or characteristics of a healthcare provider organisation and its activities are assessed or analysed against a framework of ideas, knowledge, or measures derived or developed outside that organisation".

In line with this definition the investigator intend to study how external inspection affect the quality of care provided on an organizational level. The project does not intend to study how external inspections can affect individuals in the organization nor individual professional development. The investigator takes the perspective that quality of care can be considered a system property, being dependent on how the organization providing care performs as a whole. Accordingly, improving the quality of care is dependent on changing the performance of the organization, which in turn implies change in organizational behavior and the way clinicians mutually interact and perform their clinical processes. Change in organizational behavior is a complex social process that involves a number of different practices on different organizational levels. If external inspection has the ability to contribute to improve the quality of care on an organizational level, it need to affect the practices involved in organizational change.

The effect of external inspection systems on the quality of care remains unclear and the evidence is contradictory. Studies have demonstrated a positive association between accreditation and the ability to promote change, professional development, quality systems, and clinical leadership. There is evidence to support an association between inspections and different quality outcomes e.g. reduced incidence of pressure ulcer and suicide. There are however also studies reporting that inspections have no impact on the quality of care. Inspection systems are widely used and much resources are spent on such systems worldwide. More knowledge about how and whether external inspections can effect the quality of care is needed.

The inspection process can be considered a complex intervention consisting of a set of activities that are introduced into varying organizational contexts. The inspection itself does not have a direct impact on the quality of care. If the inspection encounters non-compliant behavior, the inspected organization is responsible for implementing necessary changes. The way the inspection process affects the involved organization will thus influence how the inspected organizations pursue the following change process. The way external inspections affect the involved organization, is currently poorly understood. A better understanding of the underlying mechanisms for how inspection systems might contribute to improve the quality of care is needed. Such knowledge can improve the understanding of why effects of external inspections seem to vary, which in turn can facilitate the development of more effective ways of conducting inspections.

The study uses external inspections of sepsis detection and treatment in hospitals as a case to explore how inspections affect the involved organizations and to evaluate their effect on the quality of care. Sepsis is a prevalent disease and one of the main causes of death among hospitalized patients internationally and in Norway. Former external inspections of Norwegian hospitals have showed that insufficient governance of clinical process in the emergency room could have severe consequences for patients admitted to hospital with undiagnosed sepsis. During recent years, the Norwegian Board of Health Supervision has investigated a number of cases in which the hospitals had not provided care in line with the recommended guidelines for sepsis treatment. On this background, the Norwegian Board of Health Supervision has decided to conduct a nationwide inspection campaign with sepsis detection and treatment in acute hospitals during 2016-2017.

Early treatment with antibiotics along with compliance to treatment guidelines is associated with reduced mortality for sepsis patients. International studies have shown that compliance with treatment guidelines varies, and that improved compliance can improve patient outcomes. External inspection can identify sub-optimal compliance with treatment guidelines. Improved compliance with treatment guidelines is dependent on change in organizational practice. Such changes in organizational practice can be measured using process indicators that are indicative and sensitive for changes in the key areas identified during the inspection. The study uses process measures to assess how external inspections affect guideline adherence. Because improved guideline adherence has been demonstrated to improve the quality of care in terms of reduced mortality, it can be argued that this is an expedient case for evaluating how external inspections can affect the quality of care.

Conditions
Sepsis
Being tested
External inspection of health services
Keywords
External inspections
Medical subject headings
Sepsis

What participants receive

What participants receive. In a randomised study each person is assigned to one group by chance.

  • External inspection of health servicesBehavioural

    The intervention is external inspections of acute hospitals addressing early detection and treatment of sepsis. The intervention is delivered on an organizational level. Individuals are not assigned to an intervention. The investigator use data from individuals to assess if the organizational intervention affects care. Therefore the investigator argues that that the study is observational. The inspection will have two components, a system revision and a follow up audit with verification of patient records 8 months later. The inspection can be considered a complex intervention. The study does not intend to evaluate the individual effects of the different components of the inspection, rather the effect of the inspection as a whole.

Study groups in NCT02747121
Study groupRoleWhat they receive
Control before interventionOtherExternal inspection of health services. The intervention is external inspection of sepsis detection and treatment. The intervention is delivered on the organizational Level. Patient are not assigned to the intervention. The intervention is rolled out sequentially to 24 hospitals. We collect data at base line, before the inspections and 8 and 14 month after the inspections. The first arm is the Control period before the inspections.
Receives: Behavioral: External inspection of health services
InterventionExperimentalExternal inspection of health services. We compare the effect measures before and after the inspection. The intervention arm is data after the hospitals have received the inspection.
Receives: Behavioral: External inspection of health services

What is being measured

The primary outcome is the main question the study is designed to answer.

  1. Number of Sepsis Patients With 30 Days Mortality

    We will still use 30-day mortality rate as our outcome measure. The new international sepsis definition will over time affect coding practice and we can therefore not use routine data from the National Patient Register to calculate the mortality rate. We will calculate the mortality rate based on the patient population we include in the study. We will compare mortality rates before and after the inspections.

    Measured: 30 days

Secondary outcomes (1)
  1. Hospital Length of Stay

    Mean time for hospital length of stay before and after inspections

    Measured: Exact number of days for the length of stay was collected from the National Patient Registry. Since the outcome measure is length of stay, the time frame varies between patients. Time frame for observation periode was at least 12 months for each patient.

Timeline

From the start of the study to its completion; the mark is today. Estimated dates are the sponsor’s plan.

  1. First posted21 Apr 2016 (estimated)
  2. Study startApr 2016
  3. Primary completionDec 2020
  4. Study completionDec 2020

Resources

More details

For doctors and researchers: how the study is designed, who runs it, and its registry IDs.

Study design
Study type
Interventional
Phase
Phase N/A
Primary purpose
Health services research
Allocation
Randomised
Intervention model
Crossover
Model description
The intervention will be rolled out sequentially during 12 months to 24 hospitals, with six clusters of four geographically close hospitals. We collect data before and after the inspections.
Masking
None (open label)
Enrolment
7,407 participants (actual)
IDs, dates and publications
ClinicalTrials.gov ID
NCT02747121
Sponsor's protocol ID
2015/2195 REK number
Status last verified
Jan 2022
First submitted
11 Apr 2016
Last updated
24 Mar 2022
Data monitoring committee
No
Individual data sharing
No: In line with the ethical approval data is not to be shared outside the research group

Publications

  • Walshe K, Wallace L, Freeman T, Latham L, Spurgeon P. The external review of quality improvement in health care organizations: a qualitative study. Int J Qual Health Care. 2001 Oct;13(5):367-74. doi: 10.1093/intqhc/13.5.367.

    PubMed 11669564
  • van Dishoeck AM, Oude Wesselink SF, Lingsma HF, Steyerberg E, Robben PB, Mackenbach JP. [Transparency: can the effect of governmental surveillance be quantified?]. Ned Tijdschr Geneeskd. 2013;157(16):A1676. Dutch.

    PubMed 23594866
  • Shaw CD, Braithwaite J, Moldovan M, Nicklin W, Grgic I, Fortune T, Whittaker S. Profiling health-care accreditation organizations: an international survey. Int J Qual Health Care. 2013 Jul;25(3):222-31. doi: 10.1093/intqhc/mzt011. Epub 2013 Feb 13.

    PubMed 23411832
  • Oude Wesselink SF, Lingsma HF, Reulings PG, Wentzel HR, Erasmus V, Robben PB, Mackenbach JP. Does government supervision improve stop-smoking counseling in midwifery practices? Nicotine Tob Res. 2015 May;17(5):572-9. doi: 10.1093/ntr/ntu190. Epub 2014 Sep 19.

    PubMed 25239965
  • Plsek PE, Greenhalgh T. Complexity science: The challenge of complexity in health care. BMJ. 2001 Sep 15;323(7313):625-8. doi: 10.1136/bmj.323.7313.625. No abstract available.

    PubMed 11557716
  • Miller RR 3rd, Dong L, Nelson NC, Brown SM, Kuttler KG, Probst DR, Allen TL, Clemmer TP; Intermountain Healthcare Intensive Medicine Clinical Program. Multicenter implementation of a severe sepsis and septic shock treatment bundle. Am J Respir Crit Care Med. 2013 Jul 1;188(1):77-82. doi: 10.1164/rccm.201212-2199OC.

    PubMed 23631750
  • Levy MM, Rhodes A, Phillips GS, Townsend SR, Schorr CA, Beale R, Osborn T, Lemeshow S, Chiche JD, Artigas A, Dellinger RP. Surviving Sepsis Campaign: association between performance metrics and outcomes in a 7.5-year study. Crit Care Med. 2015 Jan;43(1):3-12. doi: 10.1097/CCM.0000000000000723.

    PubMed 25275252
  • Levy MM, Dellinger RP, Townsend SR, Linde-Zwirble WT, Marshall JC, Bion J, Schorr C, Artigas A, Ramsay G, Beale R, Parker MM, Gerlach H, Reinhart K, Silva E, Harvey M, Regan S, Angus DC; Surviving Sepsis Campaign. The Surviving Sepsis Campaign: results of an international guideline-based performance improvement program targeting severe sepsis. Crit Care Med. 2010 Feb;38(2):367-74. doi: 10.1097/CCM.0b013e3181cb0cdc.

    PubMed 20035219
  • Institute of Medicine (US) Committee on Quality of Health Care in America. Crossing the Quality Chasm: A New Health System for the 21st Century. Washington (DC): National Academies Press (US); 2001. Available from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK222274/

    PubMed 25057539
  • Gatewood MO, Wemple M, Greco S, Kritek PA, Durvasula R. A quality improvement project to improve early sepsis care in the emergency department. BMJ Qual Saf. 2015 Dec;24(12):787-95. doi: 10.1136/bmjqs-2014-003552. Epub 2015 Aug 6.

    PubMed 26251506
  • Flodgren G, Pomey MP, Taber SA, Eccles MP. Effectiveness of external inspection of compliance with standards in improving healthcare organisation behaviour, healthcare professional behaviour or patient outcomes. Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2011 Nov 9;(11):CD008992. doi: 10.1002/14651858.CD008992.pub2.

    PubMed 22071861
  • Flaatten H. Epidemiology of sepsis in Norway in 1999. Crit Care. 2004 Aug;8(4):R180-4. doi: 10.1186/cc2867. Epub 2004 May 14.

    PubMed 15312216
  • Ferrer R, Artigas A, Levy MM, Blanco J, Gonzalez-Diaz G, Garnacho-Montero J, Ibanez J, Palencia E, Quintana M, de la Torre-Prados MV; Edusepsis Study Group. Improvement in process of care and outcome after a multicenter severe sepsis educational program in Spain. JAMA. 2008 May 21;299(19):2294-303. doi: 10.1001/jama.299.19.2294.

    PubMed 18492971
  • Campbell M, Fitzpatrick R, Haines A, Kinmonth AL, Sandercock P, Spiegelhalter D, Tyrer P. Framework for design and evaluation of complex interventions to improve health. BMJ. 2000 Sep 16;321(7262):694-6. doi: 10.1136/bmj.321.7262.694. No abstract available.

    PubMed 10987780
  • Donabedian A. The quality of care. How can it be assessed? JAMA. 1988 Sep 23-30;260(12):1743-8. doi: 10.1001/jama.260.12.1743.

    PubMed 3045356

Questions about this trial

What is this clinical trial studying?

A study testing External inspection of health services in people with Sepsis, run by Norwegian Board of Health Supervision at 1 site in Norway.

The full registered description is in the About this study section and the official record.

Who may be eligible to take part?

The sponsor lists 1 inclusion and 2 exclusion criteria. Eligibility is decided by the study team after screening, so read the full criteria and contact a listed site.

Is this clinical trial currently recruiting?

The record says: finished, as of the sponsor's last update on 24 Mar 2022. Status can change between updates, so confirm with the study contact before making plans.

Where is the study taking place?

The record lists 1 site in Norway. Whether a site is taking part right now should be confirmed with that site. See every site.

What are the possible benefits and risks?

They depend on the study and the treatment, and no study can promise a benefit. The study team explains the known risks during informed consent, before anyone joins; the record itself does not list them.

Are results available for this study?

Yes. Results are posted in the registry (first posted 24 Mar 2022). A summary is in the For doctors view, and the full results are on ClinicalTrials.gov.

How can a doctor refer a patient or contact the research team?

The record lists no contact. The official record names the sponsor, who can be asked directly. AzTrials does not enrol participants or take referrals.

What does the primary outcome measure?

Number of Sepsis Patients With 30 Days Mortality (time frame: 30 days). It is what the study was designed to measure, not a finding.

Where can I read the original study information?

On the ClinicalTrials.gov record for NCT02747121, which also lists 21 linked publications.

Does a listing mean the treatment is approved or proven to work?

No. A listing means the study is registered. It does not show that the treatment is safe, works, or is approved by a regulator.

How often is this information updated?

AzTrials copies changed records from ClinicalTrials.gov every night and reloads the whole registry every week. The sponsor last updated this record on 24 Mar 2022.

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